At first I dismissed Google News as a clever but unispired way of getting one's daily news. But, since the hubbub of Google buying Blogger and how it might hook into Google News, I've taken an interest in Google's automated news page. It really is quite remarkable considering how powerful and intuitive it is, and considering the fact that a computer assembles the content by determining an article's relevance among 4,000 news sources.

The thing that really strikes me about Google News is just how much power local newspapers and independent news sources have now that they are routinely linked to from one of the world's most popular web sites. What are the odds that someone in Missouri would read feature articles from the Hartford Courant if it weren't for something like this?

And the losers in all of this are certainly the cable network news sites like CNN and MSNBC. I don't see Google linking to them very much -- not yet, anyway. Now that news seekers have such a unique, diverse and powerful tool at their disposal, the cable news sites just don't seem as relevant. Still, time will tell how it will all play out.

In any case, I know that I'll be frequenting Google News a lot more. And, if and when the Blogger acquisition does actually integrate somehow into the News page, it'll all be that much more interesting.